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In the steps of early pioneers

Ferocious, human-hunting monkeys living in the dark recesses of the red, black and blue-coloured flint hills; antelopes, barely 15cm high, dart fleet-footed from the cover of tufts of rye grass; smelly black tar that oozes from caves, and scattered mountain ash trees with shimmering tendrils of lush foliage which hover over the parched red earth like desert mirages.

This is the land Greg Warburton, co-recipient of the 1999 Australian Geographic Spirit of Adventure Award (now the AG Adventurer of the Year), set out to conquer at the beginning of July. It wasn't his first trek into the wilderness but it was perhaps the most important to him.

This time, he wouldn't be leading a string of camels, together with his wife Vicki, across the Gobi Desert of Mongolia, or covering 1600km from Wiluna to Halls Creek across some of WA's driest and most remote country. The wild he was headed into was the Helena and Aurora Range Conservation Park (known to local Aboriginal people as Bungalbin), 100km north of Southern Cross.

Pulling a trolley loaded with 35kg of food, water and camping equipment, Warburton, a Toodyay resident and winner of a 2013 WA Landcare Award, walked the 400km journey from Buckland Homestead (near Northam) to Bungalbin Hill, the highest point in the Helena and Aurora Range, in 12 days.

More than 150 years earlier, on July 3, 1861, a group of explorers undertook the same journey. Edward and Andrew Dempster, Barnard Clarkson, Charles Harper and Correll, a Nyoongar servant, were searching for new farming lands to the east of Northam. What they found, and recorded in their expedition journal, were scrubby hillocks, paddocks of grass trees, families of stick-nest rats, small "antelopes", salt lakes, red clay flats, alternating forests of "cypress" (casuarina) and white gums (wandoo), a solitary "mountain ash" (desert kurrajong) and granite outcrops adrift in seas of salmon and fluted, or gimlet, gums. Sadly, stick-nest rats no longer exist in the area (though you will still find evidence of their existence in the form of the black tar, or "cave bitumen", formed from their middens) and the "antelopes" were actually pig-footed bandicoots, which have long since disappeared, along with the a large portion of the Wheatbelt's native vegetation.

In contrast to Warburton's 12-day journey, it took the Dempster expedition 21 days to reach Bungalbin Hill, a stunning outcrop of banded ironstone in the southern part of the range, which they described as "a mass of beautifully stratified flint, principally dark red, and various colours". They also found specimens of a black, shining ore "unknown to us". It was this ore - iron ore - that inspired Warburton to repeat their journey.

The Helena and Aurora Range has been subject to a number of mining applications, which conservationists say would cause irreversible damage to the ecosystem. One of the most recent applications, for a goldmine, is currently being considered by the Environmental Protection Authority.

The range is part of Great Western Woodlands, which is regarded as the world's largest remaining temperate woodland and contains about a fifth of all known flora in Australia. Among the range's conservation values are two declared rare flora and 14 priority plant species, three threatened fauna species, including the malleefowl and gilled slender blue-tongue, and five endemic plant species.

Warburton says: "I wanted to do something to help the campaign by the Helena and Aurora Range Advocates to protect the range. By walking there, I felt it would provide an opportunity to raise awareness in the community about the issue."

He was also inspired by the fact the Dempster expedition party, the first Europeans to see the range, were all pioneers from his district, near Toodyay.

"I've always had an admiration for the bravery of our early pioneers," he says.

Warburton's earlier trek in 1996 was done to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of another intrepid explorer, David Carnegie, whose dual crossing of the Great Sandy Desert was a remarkable feat, barely recognised at the time.

On the last night of his trek, a weary Warburton camped on a clay bed dotted with smooth-skinned gimlets, salmon gums and soft grey clumps of saltbush.

In the morning, a thick fog had descended, lending an ethereal glow to the flats. As it lifted, and he emerged from the woodlands at the edge of the conservation park, he watched as the first rays of sunshine hit the distant top of Bungalbin Hill, his final destination.

Warburton encourages all West Australians to step away from the buzz and whirr of the cities. "Walking long distances is something our forefathers regarded as normal. Now it has become novel. Travelling at high speed in air-conditioned luxury, as we mostly do, we miss out on so much in the landscape."

If walking 400km is not your style, you can drive to the Helena and Aurora Range and explore Bungalbin Hill on foot. Sitting atop the hill, pay homage to the indigenous custodians of the land, the Kalamai Kapurn Nation, and imagine it how it was for the Dempster expedition, more than 150 years earlier, looking out at a "great many native fires all around" lighting one of the oldest intact landscapes on Earth, like tiny beacons in an ocean of nature.

In her book about the Dempster expedition, Expedition Eastward from Northam, Lesley Brooker writes that WA may have been a very different place if the Dempster party had not returned to Buckland.

Their intrepid spirit paved the way for others who later constructed the wells that were essential to the opening up of the east of the State and the discovery of gold.

Warburton hopes his trek will have its own legacy, drawing attention to what he sees as the need to protect what remains of a beautiful and precious part of our natural heritage.

For more about the Helena and Aurora Range, see helenaaurorarange.com.au.

Expedition Eastward from Northam, by Lesley Brooker, is published by Hesperian Press. hesperianpress.com.